


Fly High Across The Sky From Here To Kingdom Come (Fall Back Down To Where You're From)

by grandfatherclock, smokeandjollyranchers



Series: Kingdom Come [5]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Community: widojest love, F/M, Heretic!Au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-03-19 23:37:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18980683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grandfatherclock/pseuds/grandfatherclock, https://archiveofourown.org/users/smokeandjollyranchers/pseuds/smokeandjollyranchers
Summary: “Bren,” Astrid says, and she sounds a little unsettled. “You’d tell me if there was somethingreallywrong, right?”He gives her a hollow smile. “Ja.”





	Fly High Across The Sky From Here To Kingdom Come (Fall Back Down To Where You're From)

**Author's Note:**

> There is emotional/psychological abuse depicted in this fic, as noted in the tag. There is also some light physical manhandling between two people where there is a large power difference and the person being hurt finds the action violating. This is relatively isolated within the fic, and only takes place in the scene in Bladegarden, so you can skip that scene if you want to read that fic but you believe that one scene might be triggering.
> 
> There is also a depiction of graphic violence during a combat encounter.
> 
> There's also some fantasy racism in terms of how Empire officials refer to the Kryn.
> 
> \- grandfatherclock

Bren shoots up, taking a ragged breath. The sunlight is blinding, and as he sits up in _Leomund’s Tiny Hut_ , he winces, listening to the birds chirp eerily from a distance. Last night he decided to sleep by the side of the road, which normally he isn’t foolish enough to do. But last night was rough.

He sighs, rubbing his face, remembering what happened. He was riding the horse, which he stubbornly refuses to name—it’s far too fucking personalizing, and he’s attached to enough _already_ —when the memory invaded his mind like a shock to his system. He froze, making the horse, black as the glittering dark all around them, stop in his tracks. _Mutter_ , he mouthed, remembering how she used to sing this lovely song for him, as he tended to the fireplace. 

Then Bren blinked, his eyes wide. _Fuck_. He didn’t think about that in _years_. If it wasn’t for Jester Lavorre, he never would’ve, ever again. He buried his face in his hands, thinking of her freckled face and bright eyes and determined gaze. _You couldn’t let it go_ , he thought, wildly. _You were so sure, and you were right_. He wheezed, letting out a desperate little laugh, and the horse neighed, nervously. _I kind of hate you for it._ He got off, and lead the horse into a cluster of trees near the road, tying the horse to one of the tree trunks. He was barely lucid enough to create the hut, fishing absentmindedly for the pearl in his pocket, and collapsed to the ground, his eyes examining the stars critically.

He looks to the horse now, who is still sleeping. He bought him off some merchant on the road, offering a dazzling smile and casting _Suggestion_ when the merchant wasn’t receptive to the deal. That was maybe a little fucked, considering—just _considering_. He smiles bitterly to himself and looks to the small scars on his arms. But then again, he certainly tortured a lot of people, for someone who was—someone who—

The horse neighs, and Bren thanks him silently for interrupting the stuttering flow of his thoughts. Bren looks in his dull, unassuming bag, and grabs out an apple. He then gets up, walks over to where the horse is standing, ignores the bubble popping as he leaves the boundary of the spell, and runs his hand down the horse’s mane as he feeds it to him. The horse leans into his touch just slightly, and Bren feels himself almost unconsciously quirk up his lips, and _oh_ , that is _dangerous_.

He pulls his hand back and looks to where the road is stretching on, a frown playing on his lips. They’re approaching Alfield, and—he thought he was randomly wandering, in any direction that wasn’t Rexxentrum or back to Nicodranas, but _fuck, he’s approaching Alfield again, why is he approaching Alfield?_ Bren rubs his face, tired of his own bullshit. Why did he allow her to do this? Restore him like this? He can’t do _anything_. He can barely take care of this fucking horse. _Fuck you_ , he thinks, furiously, as he unties the horse from the tree. He doesn’t know whose face he is imagining, but— _Fuck you. Fuck you for doing this to me._ He thinks if Master Ikithon schedules another tuning session it might kill him.

Bren mounts on the horse, appreciating how the soft hue of the sun makes the horse’s coat shine. Even the muddy snow sloshing where the road dips looks brilliant, in this crisp morning light, and he continues, with his heart sinking, in the direction of that little town, and its outskirts.

 

Bren Aldric Ermendrud is not a good person.

The closest he thinks he might ever come to even remotely being in the light is when he’s with Jester. He remembers once, how they were outside her temple, as she was smiling and handing out candy to the children who swarmed her. One came, with tears in their eyes, showing her a scrape on their knee.

Bren raised an eyebrow. It was just a cut. _Nothing to cry over_ , he thought, thinking about how Master Ikithon would send a pulse of necrotic energy through his system when he allowed these pathetic little hisses to escape his mouth during the surgeries. _Can’t you see that this is nothing to cry over?_

Jester gently reached for them, and Bren watched, with his shoulders tensed, as she clasped her other hand on her holy symbol, casting _Cure Wounds_. The cut immediately closed, and Jester pulled out a cloth from her dress pocket to wipe the red from the child’s knees. “ _There_ ,” she said, beaming. “Look how _tough_ you are.” The child giggled, and Jester stood up. Noticing him staring, she asked coyly, “What are you _thinking_ , Bren?”

He was thinking that he felt the absurd desire to ask her to teach him that spell, but thankfully he kept his mouth shut, simply giving her a considering gaze… _him_ , a _cleric._ The thought was almost funny, in his mind, except he remembered his first real solo assignment, out there in the periphery of some insignificant Empire town. He’d been instructed to break up a meeting of Archeart followers—fucking _heretics_ , he can hear Master Ikithon hiss with disdain in his voice, even in this _fucking_ memory—and there had been a woman… 

“Bren?” Jester asked, her voice still light but a furrow to her brow.

“Ja,” he said, almost absentmindedly. There had been a woman, and she’d been pointing to him desperately, trying to send some kind of healing spell his way, as he butchered his way through her clergy. He’d set her on fire, and she’d screamed so _horribly_. Bren had thought that they’d just been driven mad by their heretic deity, unable to distinguish ally from enemy, but… Jester Lavorre was smiling at him, her eyes crinkling like they did when she was ignoring just how much of a sinner he was, and he thought it might’ve been something close to a second chance.

Then Jester pulled him by his holster into a kiss, and he forgot all about it.

Like he’s already noted. Bren isn’t a good person.

 

He doesn’t know what he’s doing here. Bren sold the black horse in Alfield to buy another one, who had a brown coat and dark eyes and a stronger frame. It was a good deal. Bren can’t afford to become _empathetic_ with these animals. He thinks of Jester casting _Greater Restoration_ on him, her eyes brimming with fear and desperation and anger, and he shakes his head to himself. Master Ikithon mentioned this to him. _Your sentimentality gets in the way of your own interests, my boy_. He was circling Bren, who was holding his hand against the wound on his shoulder left from the hounds after he hesitated in slamming that rock against them with _Animate Objects_.

_Master Ikithon_. He supposes it’s a little wrong to still call him by the title of _master_ , given what he now knows of the man, and what he did to Bren, and what truly happened to Una and Leofric Ermendrud. Even thinking his parents’ names makes him want to wince, and somehow hide. Perhaps it was a _test_ —maybe good students who were able to resist the _Modify Memory_ spell got to keep their parents, but Bren thinks of that _title_ … _Vollstrecker_. The weight of it on him makes him want to let out a strangled scream, and he thinks that there was no pathway where Mas— _Ikithon_ —would’ve allowed such a blatant loose end.

The new horse neighs beside him, and Bren wrinkles his nose, before tying him to the fence that follows the river. He’s in the surrounding forest, and… it’s _strange_. It’s strange how he feels like the creature under his skin has ripped itself out of him, and now travels with a facsimile of his smile and his stance and his magic, while this forest, and these pine trees, look the exact _fucking_ same from thirteen years ago. The green seems to tower around him, and with every step, he hears a crunch as his feet move through the muddy snow.

Passing through the fence where it’s broken off, the wood chipping and rotting, he makes his way to the river, and watches the dirty water ripple and hurtle in front of him. _Why am I doing this?_ he thinks, miserably. _They’re fucking dead._ He looks back to the horse, who gives him an uncaring huff back, and Bren smiles, his face brittle. If only everything could be easily replaced. He gazes at his covered arms momentarily, before sighing, and turning back, pulling out from his brown bag a small leather loop as he did so.

He casts _Levitate_ , and the horse gives him a startled look Bren he feels himself beginning to float. He directs himself over the sloshing, muddy water, and continues to float on the dirt pathway he knows leads to that wretched little shed. Better not to leave footprints, if he can help it. His mind is barely running, and he’s just barely reacting to his momentary impulses—he’s _sure_ this is a terrible idea, but he has a horrible feeling that everything’s fucking _ruined_ , and it makes him, ridiculously, want to think about the start.

Bren finally sees the rotting wood of that shed, and freezes momentarily, before hesitatingly coming closer and examining the outside. It’s unassuming, the same as before, but Bren can see where some of the wood panels are jutted out, cracked from brute force, and he _remembers_ , how the fuck can he _forget?_ It was the fucking _Animate Objects_ spell Mast—Ikithon—was so insistent he perfect. _Extend your range, my boy._

_God_ , this is so _fucking_ stupid. Bren pushes open the shed door, and it collapses down in front of him. He sighs, flinching at how the sudden sound breaks the tense silence of the cold still morning. He then casts _Dancing Lights_ , making them follow his form as he floats inside.

It’s empty, of course. Bren cleared it and incinerated the furniture, all those years ago, after he buried the ruined corpses. There’s dried blood splattered along the walls, which Bren eyes with cool distaste. The shed is so _small_ , smaller than he remembers, but he was younger then. Younger and less powerful, and trembling despite the cocksure smile on his lips as objects went flying, hurtling into the heretics as one of the women, who looked older and smarter and something like a leader, widened her eyes at him, before reaching for her holy symbol and _casting_.

Most of them went down so _easily_. Bren floats in the middle of the shed, the _Dancing Lights_  all around him, and thinks about how they crumbled as he leaned in from the entrance. From where the wood panels are imperfectly lined and the cracks in the wood, the cold sunlight filters through, making the red of the dried blood even more visible, and he… he _winces._ Bren’s own reaction kind of shocks him. Since when does blood make him _wince?_ That woman was tougher, throwing spells at him desperately, hissing as he neutralized them. She tried to cast _Silence_ on him, but when the destructive pattern of his _Counterspell_ dematerialized her magic that final time, she looked to him with fear and pain in her eyes and reached out her hands, and—

He _incinerated_ her. Her hands, blackened as she tried to touch him, were outstretched, and for a moment there, she seemed almost _holy._ He repressed that thought in his head then, because it was traitorous, to feel sorry for that heretic leader, to feel _anything_ beyond grateful his glorious nation gave him the opportunity to serve his king. Bren closes his eyes helplessly, and takes a shaky breath, trying to maintain his concentration on _Levitate._

Jester reached out her hands that same way. Her hands were soft on her cheeks, and she wanted so desperately for him _to trust her…_

_Fuck_. His eyes open in shock as he collapses to the ground, the impact on his knees making him take a sharp intake of breath at the momentary flash of pain. He lived under that cloud Ikithon put on his mind for so long that he forgot what it’s like to feel even remotely free, and now it’s like he’s _drowning_. In the silence. In the air. In the beautiful Nicrodrani sun. He’s _drowning_ , and as he sits up on his knees, he looks up, and sees the symbol, faded but still visible, chalked onto the far wall. Two opposite-facing crescent moons imposed on a diamond.

_Heretical insignia_ , he thinks. Bren wonders what a Crownsguard might think of him now, kneeling in front of a chalked Archeart symbol. It’s a compromising symbol, and he should get up. He should leave, and disappear. Disappear to where no one could find him. He shouldn’t dwell on these things, not bother to wonder why that woman expended such high-level magic to fucking heal _him_. She couldn’t have known, she couldn’t have _cared_ , he couldn’t have _mattered_ …

He wonders if it was Jester’s lovely scrunched face and how _similar_ her hands moved to that woman’s, when she cast _Greater Restoration_ , her mouth moving in the exact same way, that keeps pushing him back to Alfield. His eyes _sting_ , and he’s running his hands on the dirt floor, and he feels fucking _sick_ to his core. Jester Lavorre sees good in him because she sees good in fucking _everybody_ , but he can’t get this out of his head, can’t get _her_ out of his head, and he might—he might be a little ruined. He’s always accepted this about himself, but being _here_ is different. Every breath feels like too much, and he thinks he can’t live much longer the way that he is. He’s going to _die_ like this, because everything that he _is…_ everything that he’s _done…_ it’s far too fucking much. He’s _nothing_ if he isn’t _that_.

Bren’s spine suddenly straightens, and he looks up at the chalked symbol in horror. He feels _warmth_ , but it isn’t natural. It’s _arcane_ , almost blistering, and it _feels_ —it’s his _fucking mother’s embrace_. He trembles, feeling arms that aren’t there tighten their hold on him, and _fuck_ , his eyes are _wet_. This is the first time he’s feeling his mother hold him in more than a decade, and his voice catches as he tries to speak. He has to close his mouth and count internally to ten before he tries again. “Is this supposed to humble me?” Bren hisses, and there’s no response in the still air. Bren shakes his head to himself. _No_ , he mouths to himself. Just _talking_ to this heretical deity was a prison sentence, if not death. He’s _not_ going to tear up here, absolutely _fucking_ not.

Bren Aldric Ermendrud hasn’t cried since he was seventeen, when he collapsed into his bed in the room Ikithon provided for him after coming back from Blumenthal. He put a pillow over his face, and his entire body shook as he let out shaky little breaths and allowed tears to smear against his face. _Embarrassing_ , he thought, then. _That was an honor._

This can’t be—he can’t be undone _here_ , not in this place for _traitors_ , not for these bastards who were his first solo kills, since even before, Astrid and Wulf stood beside him as he killed his parents, offering silent support. Hands on his shoulder. This can’t be where he breaks. Not for… not for this. It can’t be for this.

But his eyes are starting to _burn_ , and it’s becoming harder and harder to ignore. “I didn’t—” he begins, and then bites his lip, not even knowing what the fuck he could possibly say. “I—uh.” The words die in his throat again, and it’s a little hard to breathe, and Bren squares his shoulders. This woman tried to heal him, and Jester _did_ heal him, and he doesn’t know what it says about him that he resents them, for making it even more impossible to come back to Rexxentrum. He _dreads_ Ikithon’s reaction to his belated arrival. He was expected _weeks ago_.

The chalked symbol seems to radiate coolness towards him, and he clenches his jaw. “You tried to save me,” he manages to snap. His voice is accusatory, and so, so _weak_. He looks around frantically, for something to distract his gaze, but there’s _nothing_ in this shed, no objects and certainly no people, he buried those fuckers _out back_ —

His eyes widen. His hands quivering, Bren gets up, momentarily bracing himself on the floor. He doesn’t quite realize what he’s doing, being only able to think about how he needs to get rid of the horrifying gaping emptiness in his chest, that was making his eyes so painfully wet. He sighs, and shrugs off his coat, leaving it in the shed as he exits. He’ll get it when he’s done with what he thinks he might need to do.

Bren circles out back, and examines the area. Though the landscape has shifted slightly, there being hills and dips where there didn’t use to be, it’s still essentially the same as it had been before, that night. It was dark then, but Bren could pick up certain markers, like that crooked tree, or the cracked rock, and he slowly begins to recall where he buried those bodies. He looks down at his hands and sighs. His movements groggy, almost dream-like, he pulls out a flower from a catmint plant, and after hesitating just a moment, crushes it in his hand, and mutters arcane words under his breath, summoning _Cat’s Ire_.

He isn’t supposed to know that spell, technically. Master Ikithon didn’t teach it to him, and so he isn’t supposed to know. He isn’t supposed to be able to summon an earthen cat’s paw, but then again, he isn’t supposed to have a _cat_ , and he isn’t supposed to be here, he’s supposed to be in _Rexxentrum_ , and he isn’t supposed to be _watching the giant earthen cat’s paw drag out the corpses of heretics_ —and then the paw dematerializes, and he casts it again, not bothering to worry about all the reserved magic he’s using.

When he’s tracked down fifteen bodies—there were fifteen worshippers that night, which he remembers because beyond his sharp and obsessive mind _how the fuck could he ever forget?_ —and his eyes momentarily rest on the most burned corpse. It’s a woman, wearing what must’ve been a lovely blue dress at one point, and it’s _her_. The _cleric_. He looks away, and smooths out his shaking breath, before summoning the paw again, and digging out neat, ordered graves for them next to the exterior of the shed.

Bren searches for long branches, fumbling as he carries them, clenching his jaw as dirt smears against his clothes. He narrowly misses tripping from an exposed root, and sighs, before continuing on his path. He has _no_ inkling that this is the right or respectful thing to do for the dead, besides… something internal. Something warm, in the back of his mind. Something unmeasurable, that scares him in how comforting it feels to indulge in it. He uses _Maximilian’s Earthen Grasp_ when he can no longer summon _Cat’s Ire_ , and covers the bodies in heavy layers of dirt, before using the long, straight branches to mark the graves.

He’s dirty. Bren’s hands are covered in grime, and his clothes need to be washed, and— _huh_. He’s _shaking_ , still. He stands before their graves, and he _shakes._ He wonders if maybe he should say something, but as he hesitantly opens his mouth he can just _picture_ Mas— _Ikit_ —no, _fuck_ no, who the _fuck_ does he think he is? He scoffs to himself and pictures Master Ikithon’s disappointed face, and feels sick to his stomach.

Bren _runs_ , stumbling as he goes, around the shed, and down the dirt path. He doesn’t examine the pine trees swaying in the wind, or the muddy snow, as he does. He doesn’t bother to fucking cast _Levitate_ , pushing himself past through the current of the disgusting water. He feels cold and wet, and that’s _fine_ —if he thinks about how much he’s _shivering_ , then he isn’t thinking about how he _just committed capital treason_ —and he feels himself _tripping_ , suddenly, onto the ground.

He rests there, and his chest feels so tight—like he can’t fucking breathe—and there are tears in his eyes, and he’s shaking his head. _No, no, no, no._ Not like this, it can’t be like this. He feels the warmth of the sun against the back of his head, and a ragged breath forces its way through his lips. _Not like this_.

The horse makes a gruff sound, straining against where he’s tied, reminding Bren where he is, and he slowly gets up, lumbering to the animal. He crosses through the gap in the fence, and absentmindedly fishes through his bag, finding an apple and offering it.

He neighs, not looking pleased, but accepts it regardless. The other one, that Bren sold to a merchant in Alfield proper, was the horse that loves apples… Bren roughly wipes his eyes with the back of his hand, and sits down on the ground, pulling out his book. Soon _Leomund’s Tiny Hut_ materializes around him, and the horse neighs again, from the outside, and Bren smiles helplessly. _You can’t fit_ , he wants to explain, but why the _fuck_ should he explain? This isn’t— _this is an animal._

He ignores the horse’s noises and closes his eyes. It’s the brisk morning, but he needs to rest if he’s to make it to Rexxentrum by tonight. He tries to ignore the fear gripping him, and forces his shoulders to relax, feeling himself surrender to an unsatisfying slumber.

The last thing he thinks about is Jester Lavorre’s lovely face.

 

Bren rubs his face, groaning slightly. _Teleportation Circle_ always takes such a toll on him. He examines the teleportation room curiously for any changes from the last time he was here, but it remains frighteningly similar. The red curtains are drawn where the windows are, and the lanterns emit a soft, almost orange glow. There’s no furniture here—the circular room in the turret of Master Ikithon’s manor has a large, intricate sigil constructed along the floor, that he was given access to and memorized when he was twenty years old. He recalls suddenly Master Ikithon’s cold hand on his shoulder, as Bren’s sharp eyes studied the design, and he resists now the urge to tense at the intrusive memory.

The horse neighs beside him, and he sighs. Bren doesn’t really know why he didn’t leave the animal behind, but perhaps…  he maybe does. Maybe he foolishly hopes even a fraction of Master Ikithon’s annoyance might be directed at the horse, and the difference would distinguish between losing most of himself and losing everything.

The door to the teleportation room opens, and Bren stiffens, but it’s just Master Ikithon’s assistant who stumbles out. She straightens herself and gives him a narrow look. “Bren Aldric Ermendrud,” she hisses. Her eyes dart between him and the horse, and she runs a hand through her straight brown hair anxiously.

He gives her a long, languid smile he doesn’t mean, and she turns pink very prettily. “Frau Pohl.” He walks over to her, directing the horse to follow him by pulling on his reins. Pohl follows his movement with her wary eyes, and her eyes widen as he pulls her close by her hand, and puts the reins in it. “Take care of this for me,” he says. It’s incredible how calm, and smooth, his voice sounds.

Emma Pohl clenches her jaw, looking at the horse with disbelief. “He’s _very_ upset,” she says. Bren forces himself to continue holding up that lazy smile, hiding how he momentarily stills when she says  _he_.  “You’re in hot shit, Herr Ermendrud.” Pohl eyes him with naked curiosity and something like hunger in her eyes. “Where were you?”

He tilts his head like he’s honestly considering telling her. After a pause, he says, his tone soft and apologetic, “Not for you to know.” Wulf might’ve laughed at the facsimile of empathy playing out his voice. Bren looks to the door that she came out from, and bites the inside of his cheek. “Is he free?”

“In his office,” Pohl says, still looking at the horse. “Does this animal have a name?”

He smirks. “Emma.”

Pohl momentarily freezes, and then, seeing his mean little smile, glares at him. “Fuck you.” She adds, after a second, looking for the proper revenge to his shitty teasing, “Hopefully he doesn’t eat you alive.”

It fucking works. It wouldn’t have worked a month ago, but now it _fucking works_. His fake smile momentarily cracks, and Pohl steps back, startled by his dark look. _He already has_ , he wants to say. _Can’t you tell that he already has?_ He gives Pohl a courteous nod and moves past her.

Pohl isn’t like them, she isn’t a _mage_ , and Bren has _no_ idea where Master Ikithon found her. He can feel her gaze on his back, and he sighs. She’s useful and clever in her own ways, Bren supposes. He can practically hear Master Ikithon in the back of his head, saying that having pawns who can’t offer much besides their own loyalty and whose _continued survival relies solely on staying in my good graces have their own uses, my boy_.

Then again. He exhales nervously as he passes by Master Ikithon’s portrait in the great hall after he comes down the long, winding staircase. He thinks perhaps he shouldn’t feel so smug about being a slightly more useful tool. It isn’t as if his own survival _doesn’t_ depend on whether he’s in Master Ikithon’s good graces.

And right now, he is decidedly _not_.

Bren stops in front of Master Ikithon’s door, and takes a shaky breath, before forcing himself to relax his shoulders. Hesitating for just another moment, he forces his hand up and knocks once.

There’s a frightening silence, and then he hears a soft, “Come in.”

He has to know it’s Bren. Pohl must’ve notified Master Ikithon when she found Bren in the teleportation room. He has fucking _Sending_ , after all—he’s heard Master Ikithon’s voice in his head _so many times_ , and only ignored it once, last week. Master Ikithon didn’t bother to send another, and Astrid didn’t either, and the oppressive silence was more punishing than if he berated Bren every hour. He clenches his hands, before releasing them, and reaches for the doorknob, bowing his head as he comes in. Unable to look at Master Ikithon’s face just yet, he closes the door behind him, and stands in front of the desk where his teacher is sitting.

Master Ikithon’s even breath is deceptive, just like Bren’s. _You’re in hot shit, Herr Ermendrud_. “You may sit.” He gestures to the seat in front of his desk beside Bren.

Bren nods weakly and sits. He rests his hands on the arms of the chair and forces them to remain still.

“Look at me.” His voice is still pleasant, and Bren’s _arms_ —

Bren forces his head up, trying to hide his momentary shock. His arms are _aching_ , why are they _aching?_ He hasn’t had a tuning session in a _month_ , but he’s suddenly all too aware of the horrible sensation of the things under his skin, that sometimes in the dim light make his scars _glow_ , and they feel so fucking _wrong_. Master Ikithon’s face is impassive, but it crushes Bren all the same.

“You didn’t respond to my message,” he says. His dark eyes glitter, watching Bren’s every minute movement. The light filtering through the window into the office made his skin seem to glow in yellows and oranges—like he’s on _fire_. “You were trained better than that.”

“Yes, sir,” Bren mutters, hands mildly digging into the arms of the chair.

Master Ikithon’s eyes narrow, and then—it’s strange. Bren swears he sees his mouth moving slightly, but then he blinks, and— _nothing_. Master Ikithon’s face remains unreadable, but there’s something playing under it, something seething, and Bren is reminded intimately of how similar the two of them can be. Both are creatures wearing the faces of people, and looking at this person, this archmage—it _hurts_. “You brought a _horse_ to my manor.”

He resists the urge to look away. “I was injured on my last assignment,” he says, by way of explanation. Weak, but not _technically_ a lie. Internal bleeding and cracked ribs are a pretty significant injury, even where Bren is concerned. They wouldn’t heal him here—they would consider it making him too soft, and would prefer the additional weeks he _couldn’t_ work—and so, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t quite matter where Bren chooses to recuperate. It’s the lack of communication that’s his true sin.

The way Master Ikithon raises his eyebrow, both pleased and displeased at his short statement, makes him realize with a chill down his spine that he would’ve been able to tell if Bren lied straight to his face. “You allowed yourself to be injured,” he says, and he sighs. His face is stony.

Bren resists the urge to wince. “I’m sorry,” he says, his voice quiet. _Weak_ , he thinks, dispassionately. _Why are you so fucking weak?_

“I didn’t train you to be weak, my boy.” His words mirror Bren’s thoughts eerily, and Bren stiffens. His tone is so _cloying_ and _claiming_ that it makes Bren kind of sick. Master Ikithon’s gaze drops to Bren’s arms, still in pain, and he raises an eyebrow. “It’s been a while since your last session.”

“Thirty-three days,” Bren whispers. _Fuck_. They’re painful in the best of times, but right now it feels like the crystals in his arms are _pulsing_ —

“Tomorrow, at noon,” Master Ikithon says, interrupting his thoughts, and then he smiles. It’s cold, hard, and so, _so_ knowing. “Don’t be late.”

It isn’t until Bren is already outside, after nodding jerkily at the cool dismissal, that he realizes Master Ikithon didn’t bother to question him further on _why_ he didn’t respond to the message sent by _Sending_. Which means— _he already knows_ , or at the very fucking least, he thinks he does. Bren realizes he’s gripping the doorknob tightly, and he exhales, letting it go.

He counts to ten because he thinks that if he doesn’t, he won’t be able to recite arcane phrases Master Ikithon taught him, with that perpetual disappointed frown on his face. He then casts _Teleport_ , and disappears to somewhere far, far away _._

But not that far.

 

Astrid isn’t pleased to see him.

She stares where he materialized himself in her safe house in the outskirts of Rexxentrum, her eyes wide before her characteristic scowl works her way onto her lips. “You _fucking_ asshole,” she hisses. Astrid throws the pages she was reading at him, and they harmlessly scatter onto the floor.

Bren looks down at them, unimpressed. “Nice way to treat state secrets.” He examines the interior of the secluded little wooden cabin Astrid bought little over a year ago. It’s as bare as it used to be, except for the couch Astrid is currently sprawled on, a table, some cabinets and a stove on the far wall.

Astrid scoffs, sitting up. She runs a hand through her hair absentmindedly as she considers him. “They’re hardly secret,” she mutters. “Master Ikithon thinks I would be better served studying up on some military history. Empire conquest of the Julous Dominion.” She looks resentfully at the pages. “I’ve been rereading this shit since my _friend_ ”—Astrid glares at him—“went missing in action, and I was forbidden from _contacting him_.”

Bren sighs, his stomach shifting uncomfortably at the thought of Master Ikithon withholding him from Astrid—he probably might’ve responded to _her_ , and his master knew that—and walks over to the other side of the couch, sitting beside her. “It’s—nothing. Needed some time.” _I found out my parents were innocent and almost lost my faith and my mind._ “I came to my senses.”

Astrid tilts her head to him. Her green eyes are searching, and Bren looks away. She always sees so _fucking_ much. “He was really angry.” She looks ghostly in the flickering lantern light—ghostly and uncertain. “I thought he might—” She cuts herself off there, and narrows her eyes at him. “Where _were_ you?”

Bren looks to the scattered papers on the floor, and grimaces. “He was understanding,” he manages to say, his voice quiet. Master Ikithon knows he intentionally kept away, but—he also knows Bren _came back_. Bren would always come back.

_Don’t be late_. He remembers Master Ikithon’s eyes drilling into him dangerously, before idly examining his staff resting against his desk, and his stomach _drops._

Bren smirks bitterly because if he doesn’t, he thinks he might break. He would _never_ be late again—seeing Astrid’s tired face only solidifies that sentiment. He looks back to her. “Took care of some loose strings.” His voice is careful, because this isn’t a technical lie, either. Giving proper burials to his first real solo murders counts as taking care of _loose strings_ , in the most treasonous, backstabbing way possible, but he—he doesn’t quite know why he did it. It felt right, at the time. As a gesture, it _is_ kind of empty, considering how he’s still doing what he did back then, but it… it felt just, and that scares the fuck out of Bren.

He wonders, examining the dirt still under his fingernails, why he decided suddenly _he_ thought he knew what was right, in that shed, even momentarily. Even for a second. He’s fucking _told_ what is right. That’s Master Ikithon’s job. Who is approved, who isn’t, who is allowed to die, who _has_ to die, who doesn’t—and _god_ , Bren can’t remember the last time his sense of righteousness didn’t line up with the Empire’s.

He can practically _feel_ Astrid’s curiosity and annoyance turn to worry in the room as he loses himself to his thoughts, but he just can’t bring himself to care. He feels… alone, in a different kind of way than he’s used to. He doesn’t really want to talk to Astrid, even though he sought her out. He wants the Nicodrani sun, and the sand between his toes, and a little blue tiefling smiling at him. The little blue tiefling who broke his entire fucking _world_ , and made it even more intolerable to be the person who he was for so many years. And now he _can’t even turn to her_ —

“Bren,” Astrid says, and she sounds a little unsettled. “You’d tell me if there was something _really_ wrong, right?”

He gives her a hollow smile. “Ja.”

Astrid nods and turns to go pick up the pages on the floor, and Bren watches with a distant gaze. Her hair seems to glow in the light like a halo, and in that second, she looks almost heavenly. Her movements are graceful, and her jaw is sharp and elegant, and he feels an utter _loss_ for her—Master Ikithon’s abrupt instruction must’ve terrified her, even as she acts so unaffected.

Like he fucking said. Bren Aldric Ermendrud isn’t a good person.

 

Bren Aldric Ermendrud is being _punished_.

He stiffens, under Master Ikithon’s cold gaze. “Right now?” he says, in disbelief in spite of his attempt at impassiveness. He hates how his voice momentarily stutters before he catches himself. It’s dark— _11:48 post merīdiem_ , Bren thinks miserably—and the only source of light is Master Ikithon’s lamp and the lanterns set up along the walls. Something flits across Master Ikithon’s face at his response, and he widens his eyes. “Sir,” Bren adds, hastily.

He sighs, massaging his temple. “All these assignments have turned you half-feral,” he mutters, as though Bren isn’t even there. He clenches his jaw as he considers Bren’s still form, Bren’s head tilted slightly in submission. “You’re no good on your own. I’ll keep you stationed closer, soon enough.” Bren can _feel_ his shoulders start to tense at this, and he forces himself to not react. _Fuck_ , he thinks, annoyed. Master Ikithon continues to consider him, and then he _smiles_ , his face bitter. “Cricks have taken one of the ostensibly _hidden_ safe houses along the periphery of Bladegarden. Two miles west. This isn’t officially _sanctioned_. Flush them out, and find the leak. The safe house can be rebuilt if need be. _Take care of this_.” He pauses, noticing how Bren is too still to his biting words—it’s a tell, and Bren needs to learn how to shake himself the fuck off of it—and then, his entire face seems to shift. Master Ikithon says, softly, “Redeem yourself, my boy.”

Bren nods, the movement slightly jerky. It might’ve been a trick of the trembling lamplight, but Master Ikithon’s eyes seem—unusually bright. His gaze seems to be appraising, his face almost _warm_ , and Bren feels sickening shame for falling so fucking _short_. “How many, sir?”

Master Ikithon looks down at the report he’s holding, seeming disinterested by his halting response, and his lips curl up, as though he’s amused. “Nine,” he says, and Bren freezes. “At least three mages.”

_At least three mages_ , he thinks, a little stunned _._ There’s a fucking _difference_ between worshippers whose false gods rarely offer them any boons, and fucking _trained Xhorhassian mercenaries_ —this isn’t even what he typically _does_ , and certainly not _alone_. He’s being fucking _punished_. His hands involuntarily clench into fists, and Master Ikithon’s eyes drop down to them, his face becoming hard again. Like the flick of a switch. Bren remembers Jester’s dark, angry eyes, her hand on the wound on his chest. His chest aches _now_ , like his fucking _arms_ , at the mere memory. _They’re going to kill you._ He closes his eyes and then opens them, relaxing his hands and unclenching his jaw. “When am I to be expected, sir?”

Master Ikithon watches him, and Bren resists the urge to move, to flinch, in this heavy quiet. He then lets out a short, abortive laugh—and it’s _silent_ , the only thing interrupting the stillness being the sound of the air passing through his lungs. “Fifteen days, at noon,” he says, his eyes momentarily distant like he’s just come up with that arbitrary deadline. He gives Bren another long look, before turning back to the documents on his desk. “You’re dismissed.” His voice is clipped.

Bren nods, again, and leaves the room, pausing in his movement to close the door behind him carefully. He feels Master Ikithon’s gaze on his back all the while, and it’s kind of quietly horrifying. Like a shot through his chest. _They would’ve let you die_. Bren closes his hands back into fists at his intrusive thoughts and makes his way across the great hall. He ignores Master Ikithon’s portrait that always seemed to follow him with his brutal painted gaze, and begins walking up the stairs to the turret, his footfalls the only thing interrupting the moody silence.

Recounting the number of steps in the stone staircase is only so distracting. He’s done this so many times, it’s barely helpful anymore. _One hundred, one hundred and one, one hundred and two_ —

The thought hits him again, like a fist to his face. _They’re going to kill you, and I want you to leave them._

Bren _snarls_ , as Jester’s voice rips through his head. He _slams_ his fist the stone wall and feels something like _relief_ as pain momentarily flashes through his hand. He freezes for a second, shocked by his own simmering rage, and then slumps his shoulders, looking down at his own hand miserably. Nothing is broken, but his knuckles are bleeding, staining the bandages he’s wearing along his arms and up to his hands from the operation. His arms feel like _they’re on fucking fire_ , and Bren doesn’t _cry_ during those sessions, not _ever_ , but the last time was—he takes a ragged breath, even admitting it to himself feeling fucking impossible—last time was _close_. The surgery made the previous aching _worse_ , and merely looking at his arms makes Bren sick to his stomach.

_They’re going to kill you, and I want you to leave them._

Bren shakes his head to himself and buries his face in his hands. _Oh, Jester_ , he mouths silently, smiling helplessly despite himself. Jester, who cares so fucking much, who cares so much she ruined his delicate balance. Jester, who wants to make him into a—what, traitor? Martyr? The thought makes Bren want to bark out a rough laugh. He continues walking up the pathway, trying to expel her from his thoughts and his dreams, and he finally reaches the room adjacent to the teleportation room. He makes his way to the far side, where there’s an empty desk. Bren sighs, and knocks on the wood. The sound reverberates through the silence.

There is a pause, and then he hears frantic steps from another room, as Emma Pohl makes her way to her desk from the doorway adjacent to her desk. She looks tired, her brown hair a slight mess, and her annoyed look deepens when she realizes it’s him. “Herr Ermendrud,” she says, rubbing her face. She always sounds a bit sarcastic when she gives him any modicum of respect, and he wonders cooly if she really finds herself that intrinsic to Master Ikithon that she makes enemies and rivals so easily. Pohl sits in her chair, under his considering gaze, and pulls out a familiar black binder. “If you’re going to ask me to file your taxes, I’m not going to do that. I’m not _your_ secretary.”

Bren gives her a long look, and her gaze flits away. She looks somehow even more put out, and the fake smile playing on his lips widens. “Did someone ask you to do that?” he asks, not really caring. He’s delaying the inevitable. He’s delaying his entire body bloodied and bruised because he’s being fucking _punished_.

“Eodwulf still doesn’t seem to understand my job here,” Pohl says. His distracted gaze sharpens when she mentions Wulf, and Pohl’s eyes brighten at his sudden interest. She tilts her head, a look playing on her face like she’s trying to appear conspiratorial. “Maybe he doesn’t understand _his_.”

Bren smirks. _Oh_ , this is new. Eodwulf, who carries daggers on him like most people carry coin, being unable to do his fucking _job_. Bren wants to lean close and ask Pohl if she really means that. If the man who dragged Bren two miles to a safe house as Bren slowly bled out in the harsh Empire winter is truly that incompetent. He wants to scare her a little with the details, and ask why someone who presents herself as such a good Zemnian woman is working with such creatures. He wants to ask if she really thinks this will fucking win Bren over.

He says none of those things, and simply reaches out to tap the binder she’s holding. “Checking out,” he says stiffly.

Pohl nods, looking a little disappointed. She opens the binder and makes the note of his departure, before snapping the binder shut and pointing dismissively with her thumb to the room to their right. “That’s been cleaned. You can use it to cast.”

“Danke,” he mutters, and passes by her, through the doorway. She’s still looking at him, and he wants to snap at her, snap at everyone, to fucking _look away, and leave me_ , and he shakes his head to himself. _Fuck_ , he thinks, desperately. _You really have become feral_. His arms are aching, his back is still stiff from being strapped down for hours on end, and they _still_ haven’t managed to silence his thoughts through the—through the—

_Torture_ , he thinks, and he can’t lose his mind _here_ , with Pohl fucking _watching_ , so his hands simply tremble, filled with nervous energy he doesn’t quite know what the fuck to do with.

Bren continues into the small alcove. It’s big enough that he can take out his gem-encrusted chalks and carve out a temporary teleportation circle, so he fishes for the material components in his bag. He swallows his unease at the tight space, and gets to work, snapping his fingers and summoning the _Dancing Lights_. It normally takes just a minute, but Bren’s movements are groggy, uneven, _shaking_ —

_At least three fucking mages_. It isn’t the thought of facing them that’s unsettling. He had challenging assignments before. It was the look on Master Ikithon’s _face_ in that _room_. His cool, glittering dismissal. Astrid is sitting just a couple miles away from this manor, bored out of her mind as she studies up on ancient military tactics. He could’ve sent them both, easily, if he wanted to. They’re stronger, and smarter, and more clever, when they’re together, which means—Master Ikithon wants him _weak._

_He has faith in you_ , Bren thinks, coldly, as he finishes drawing the sigil. _Don’t squander this second chance._ But his furious mind can’t stop whirring. Spies don’t take on strongholds alone. Vollstreckers typically work in small units when taking on this kind of mission. This is— _unusual_ , at the very _fucking_ least.

_They’re going to kill you, and I want you to leave them._

_Fuck._ Arcane words seem to _rip_ out of Bren Aldric Ermendrud’s mouth, as he tries to drown out the sweet sound of Jester Lavorre’s lovely voice with his mouth. _Shut up_ , he thinks desperately, as he feels himself dematerialize. _Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up_ —

And then, there’s finally silence.

 

Bladegarden isn’t meant for people like Bren.

The obsidian stronghold is bureaucracy, and soldiers, and maps of the border to Xhorhas, and uniforms, and the mountain pass, and a certain unit of Cobalt Soul monks who scowl at him as he passes them, and the crisp, cold _air_ , and the dark _clouds_ , and it’s all a little horrifying, and it’s all a little much. Every soldier he passes wears the same basic plate mail, with the silver and dark crimson design, with certain differences based on rank, but—

They all look like his father. _Leofric Ermendrud_ , proud Dwendalian, who Bren murdered in cold blood when he was seventeen, as the snow fell around him. He tries to avoid looking at them, but the hallway is so crowded, and Bren’s relatively unused to the frantic pace of everyone stationed here trying to get to where they needed to go, as compared to the rest of the soldiers who spend most of their year assigned to this stronghold. He finally makes it up several staircases from the teleportation room, to where he remembers is the office to the assistant to the Archmage of Domestic Protections. There are representatives for the Cerberus Assembly in all the major forts along Empire borders, but the influence is more intense near Xhorhas, for self-evident reasons.

Bren hesitates for just a moment, before knocking on the wooden door. 

“Come in,” someone says, after a pause. It’s a clipped, slightly irritated, Zemnian accent—the posh one, from the streets of Rexxentrum. Bren straightens his back, before opening the door and closing it behind him. 

He turns to look at the man who invited him in. He’s a handsome half-elf, sitting behind a desk like Pohl’s, though his is much more organized. There are maps covering the walls, all marked up and covered in shorthand military symbols and complex code. Lamps affixed to the walls emit a sharp, arcane white light, different from what’s in Master Ikithon’s manor, but that isn’t—that isn’t what startles Bren.

What startles Bren is the older man sitting in the chair in front of the desk of the assistant, who is in a slightly tilted position in his chair to peer at Bren coming in. He’s an older elven man, in deep blue robes. He has startling white _hair_ , and such pale _skin_ , and Bren feels himself stiffen, realizing exactly who this man is.

Martinet Ludinus De'leth raises an eyebrow. “Ah, yes. You’re supposed to be coming.” He also has that Rexxentrum accent, and hearing the way his voice drips with dismissiveness makes Bren feel like a teenager again, having all those beautiful and wealthy classmates whisper and flirt with him, giggling to each other as his face burned with embarrassment. Always the butt of some joke he couldn’t possibly understand. De’leth turns away from Bren and looks to the half-elf. “Get him one of the rooms on the mid-level,” he says, dryly. “ _Alone_ , Brandt.”

“Of course, sir.” Brandt puts down the binder he’s holding, and opens up one of his folders on his desk, looking through the internal documents. “Though I must inform you, there’s _very_ limited—”

“ _Please_ ,” De’leth interrupts, and though Bren can’t see his face, he knows an amused smile is playing on his lips. This is the head of the entire _fucking_ Cerberus Assembly. Bren can _feel_ the power radiating off of him, even in his relaxed, seated stance. _Fuck_ , he thinks wildly. His hands tremble slightly, and he tries to force them to still. “I don’t want even my most worthless soldier catching this one’s crazy.”

Bren can’t help but widen his eyes momentarily at the cutting comment, and being unable to take the sting of Brandt’s considering look on him, he bows his head and examines the black obsidian floor, imitating impassiveness. His breathing is uneven, and he feels so fucking— _exposed_. Exposed and _weak_.

“ _That_ is a Vollstrecker?” Brandt asks. His voice is curious, like Bren’s some _zoo animal_ —

“Careful.” De’leth’s voice drops slightly, and Bren clenches his hands into fists beside him. “We take care of the Cricks. _They_ take care of what happens inside the border.” The mocking smile returns into his voice near the end. “I’ve very fond of you. I’m not fond of you enough to protect you if _this one_ ”—he gestures to Bren—“decides your fucking _question_ is a threat to national security.”

Brandt’s face flattens slightly at the reprimand. He runs a hand through his blond hair and narrows his eyes at Bren. “Room 112,” he mutters, before looking back to his superior. “I apologize for my forwardness, Master De’leth.”

Bren can’t help but imperceptibly wince at _master_. He’s _completely_ out of his element here. He isn’t a soldier—he should’ve been, it was his next natural step after graduating from the Soltryce Academy, but Master Ikithon was so fucking _convincing._ Simply being in this place, this place for captains and generals, is uncomfortable, and terrifying, and he quietly turns to leave. As soon as he moves from his position, he hears De’leth cooly say, still looking away from him, “I haven’t dismissed you.”

Bren freezes. This feels—fucking _absurd_. Like his first kiss at the academy, with the other girl— _Hanna_ , with the curly brown hair—wrinkling her nose and asking if he ever made out with anyone from the backwater he crawled out from. Brandt smiles smugly from behind his desk, as De’leth gets up from his chair, and walks towards Bren. His face is flat, with none of the warmth he shows his assistant, and Bren widens his eyes, as he comes uncomfortably close. “I apologize, sir,” Bren manages to say, forcing himself not to step back.

De’leth reaches out and grabs him by his chin, and tilts his face, examining his features. Bren lets out a shaky, startled breath, trying not to wince at his cold, unexpected touch. “So this is one of Trent’s little pets,” he murmurs. “He hoards you all, you know. Keeps you close. Like his nicest porcelain.” He lets out a small laugh at his joke, and Bren tries not to tremble.

He doesn’t respond, simply allowing himself to be held by him. _Fuck_ , how can he respond? All his fucking walls, and this man’s smug smile tears them down, turning him into the scared little kid that first left Blumenthal. He can probably kill Bren with one _fucking_ word.

Mercifully De’leth lets go of Bren’s chin, and Bren stumbles back, his shame and confusion probably written all over his fucking face. De’leth’s mean smile curls wider, and he says, quietly, “You’re dismissed.”

Bren nods, his movements sharp and awkward and stilted, and it takes all his willpower to walk out of the room in a somewhat measured, steady gait. They both watch him silently, with their curious eyes and sheltered faces, and Bren hates how his hands are shaking as he closes the door behind him.

Bren takes deep, calming breaths, as he makes his way down one staircase, and then down to the room he’s assigned. He pushes his way through the hallway, feeling the sudden desire to _torch_ anybody who even comes _slightly_ close to him. It can’t be helped, that shoulders brush, that people stumble into him, but Bren thinks he might lose his fucking mind until he finally reaches the less busy residential area.

He manages to find Room 112. There’s no key—some kind of abjuration magic opens the door for him and closes it shut as he enters. He thinks that any other time, he would love to explore the mechanism behind the thing—look more closely at the symbols engraved around the doorknob, maybe memorize the sigil drawn on the floor around the door in the inside of the room for later study. Bren scoffs, collapsing on the small bed and burying his face in his hands. Another thing he’s letting them steal from him.

It was—it was purer, in the beginning, Bren thinks. It wasn’t always this wretched. There was a year, a year and a half, where things were going to be alright. Sure, the teachers wrinkled their noses at his dirty boots, and the other students didn’t really like or understand him, and the slight drawl of his accent, but he had Astrid, and he had Wulf, and he had himself. It was going to be alright.

Bren’s slowly beginning to realize Master Ikithon has ripped all three of those things right from under his grasp. He _barely_ gets to see Astrid, since they’re both so _fucking_ busy—and when he’s recuperating, she’s gone, and when she’s free, he’s deep in cover. He’s sure it’s by design. Bren barely _sees_ Wulf—it’s months at a time. That fucker’s mouth is entirely too clever for his own good, and every time, the thought of finding him and seeing the state he’s in is _terrifying_. But today? He doesn’t even have himself. Probably hasn’t had himself in a while. De’leth held him in his hand, and Bren surrendered to it, because it was easy, and because was second nature, and because all he could think at that moment was _fuck_ and _please_ and _just end it._ It’s surreal, and he couldn’t believe it was happening to him as it was happening, but—it _did._ It’s been happening for a _while_. At least Master Ikithon bothered to be _subtle._

It’s late. He should get some sleep. It isn’t like Bren is going to be able to get anything done tonight. _1:43 ante merīdiem_ , his distracted mind offers, and he sighs, rubbing at his arms. Soft flashes of pain accompany every touch, and he wants to _scream_ in frustration. As if he doesn’t have enough on his plate, now there’s his fucking _arms_ , and this fucking _mission_ —where he has to apparently flush out Kryn operatives alone while an archmage and his countless undoubtedly talented sycophants sit around with their maps and codes and secrets, playing at war while in all fucking likelihood Bren could become nothing but a stain of red and gore against the dirty snow.

_Jester was right_ , his mind traitorously whispers, and Bren scoffs, hands in still in his face. His breath is stuttering, and it—he was—it all fucking _hurts_. The thought that has been plaguing his head all night tears through him again— _They’re going to kill you, and I want you to leave them_ —and he hisses, grabbing the pillow and pushing into his face. The momentary reprieve the darkness offers isn’t nearly enough, and after a small hesitation, he snaps his fingers, and materializes Frumpkin, for the first time in more than a month, onto this plane. The pressure on his chest is welcome, and grounding, and worth the stream of annoyance and rage and worry radiating off of the familiar. “Sorry,” Bren mutters, pushing away the pillow. Frumpkin stares at him, his tail flicking dangerously, and he smiles helplessly. “I’m sorry, Frumpkin.”

After a tense, stiff silence, Frumpkin lays his head against Bren’s chest, and Bren lets out a shaking breath, raising his hand to run his hand through the fur. The horse—Bren wants to wince, remembering the look of confusion and _panic_ on the animal when he sold him to that merchant in Alfield—the horse used to nuzzle into his palm like this. He’s blinking, blinking to hide _something_ , and it’s horrifying. _When did I become so weak?_ His jaw clenches. _Weak for archmages, and weak for animals_. Bren imagines Jester running her hand through his hair, and beaming down at him, and he sighs. _Weak for heretics_.

Bren Aldric Ermendrud goes to sleep with a shitty, thin blanket, to that uncomfortable thought playing in his head.

 

He takes down three soldiers and one of the mages before he’s _really_ in trouble.

The safe house isn’t even that significant—it outwardly appears to be an unassuming cabin in the forestry lower down the mountain pass to where the grand outpost of Bladegarden is situated, and the military doesn’t use it. It falls under the direct jurisdiction of the Archmage of Civil Influence and is intended solely to be used by the secret Dwendalian order entrusted to find and execute traitors on Empire soil. It’s meant for the Vollstreckers, and Bren stayed there once himself, but he _barely_ remembers—he wasn’t lucid, then. He was _dying_ , and it was only Astrid deciding to cauterize his wounds that saved his life, even as he hated her as she did it.

The two guards are easy enough. Bren, hidden behind a large pine tree, relatively far from where they patrol in a circular pattern around the cabin, watches them through Frumpkin’s eyes. He isn’t allowed to use his familiar, technically, but he also deeply suspects no one is playing fair in all of this, and he’s—he’s fucking _scared_. He isn’t _supposed_ to be. He’s a fucking spy, and it isn’t even the possibility of _dying_ that terrifies him—that would be a reprieve, and a desperate part of him still thinks it would be an honor—but the idea of dying _alone_. Dying as a shadow. Dying as someone who is so insignificant and powerless that people talk around him even as he’s in the fucking room. Pohl, Master Ikithon, that shitty half-elf, the head of the entire fucking Cerberus Assembly—he doesn’t want to be alone anymore like he used to, and that’s _horrifying_.

The guards wear chitinous, insect-like leather armor typical of military operatives of the Kryn Dynasty, but it fits them oddly, and they carry themselves with a nervous demeanor—one keeps adjusting his helmet using the backwards facing horns, and the other hisses at him in a language Bren doesn’t recognize. It’s fairly clear that whoever these people are, they aren’t necessarily affiliated with the official army on the other side of the border—it’s a shame that it hardly fucking matters. _Flush them out_. Ikithon wants them dead first. Even corpses can be questioned later. Bren briefly toys with the idea of kidnapping one of the guards and then replacing them on their shift, but the two guards stay close, and Bren grits his teeth. _Fuck._

He sighs and snaps out of Frumpkin’s vision. They’d know if he opened his mouth, anyway. He’s _terrible_ with accents. _Beggars can’t be choosers,_ he thinks, idly. This isn’t a complex structure with multiple entries and exits—it’s a fucking _cabin_ , and they’re far from home, and so they’ll assume, justly, that any stranger is an enemy. The only thing he has going for him is the element of surprise, which he has to exploit as much as he possibly can.

Bren hesitates for just a second, before taking out from his bag an eyelash encased in gum arabic. He casts _Invisibility_ , and slowly makes his way closer, sticking to near the thick trunks of the trees around him. When he sees the two guards make their way suitably close to the cabin, Bren takes out bat guano with one hand and phosphorus with the other, gives himself a moment to think about Jester’s lovely face, twisted in anguish and pain as he shouted at her the last time they talked, and directs a _Fireball_ , so much stronger than he usually allows it to be, to the cabin and  _overchannels_.

The crystals under his skin _glow_ through the bandages, and he _screams_ with pain, looking down at his arms as his invisibility is dispelled by his use of combative magic. It’s intense— _too intense_ , he realizes, as he feels blood stain his arm wraps—and his entire body is trembling and _aching_. As he looks back up, preparing for their response, the cabin—the cabin is—

 

Bren Aldric Ermendrud is seventeen, and Astrid’s hand is on his shoulder. The snow is falling, seeming orange and yellow and red in the firelight, and it’s beautiful. It’s all so fucking beautiful, and it seems like something out of a dream. Wulf stands beside him, a bitter smile playing on his lips as he stares at the flames engulfing Bren’s childhood home. He turns to Bren, smirking just a little. Wulf tends to become an ass when he’s scared. “Real pretty, ain’t it?”

Bren’s shaking, but he manages a hesitant smile. “Ja.” He opens his mouth to try to say more, but he really, truly can’t, and then Wulf’s holding him, as he collapses into his sure grip. Astrid watches them silently, playing with the necklace around her neck.

“Hey,” Wulf whispers. His voice seems to tremble. “I’m—uh. I’m sorry. I thought they were—good ones.”

Bren shrugs, his movements stilted and awkward. His head feels blank from all the stress and adrenaline, and he’s slowly beginning to crash, and he doesn’t _want to_. He wants to remain angry, he doesn’t want to be _heartbroken_ — “I’m sorry about yours.”

Wulf smiles with all his teeth, and it’s a little unsettling. “ _Don’t be._ ”

_Bren_ , Astrid says, quietly, forcing his wide-eyed gaze away from the murderous way Wulf’s eyes were glittering. He stiffens, at the sound of her—fuck, not  _her_ , it’s  _the—_ voice. He doesn’t—she didn’t—and it’s all _wrong_. It’s deeper, and it’s older, and it’s a little mean, and it’s a little sad. _Bren Aldric Ermendrud._

He—

 

Bren didn’t see his parents’ bodies blacken in the flames—they were far too inside the house for that, and by the time the flames cooled, the three of them were on their way back to Rexxentrum. He wonders if his parents looked the way these guards look, with their forms darkened and shifting in the moving entropy of the fire. Like a blurred image, in real time. They collapse instantaneously, and as Bren looks past them, to the crumbling remains of the cabin, he sees five other injured figures still standing, with two others crumpled against the rubble. One of them, who is simply gore staining the ruined floorboards, isn’t wearing the leather armor, and Bren thinks, distantly, _Now two mages._ If he survives this next onslaught, he thinks he might have some ideas for them.

Bren _runs_ , in the vague direction of Bladegarden, stumbling through the muddy snow. He knows they’ll chase him. Hopefully, he’s out of range for most of their spells, and hopefully, they’ll think he’s the bait, choosing not to pursue him for fear there are others waiting, better hidden. Those are a lot of fucking assumptions, and he winces at the weakness of his plans. He’s already thinking about _Teleport_ —he has fifteen fucking days, and taking out nearly _half_ of their group, despite suspecting they were the _weaker_ of the crew, is pretty fucking good, for three days in. They have nowhere to go, so they’ll stick to this area, but without the element of surprise, they’ll fucking _Counterspell_ whatever he does. All of this is, of course, _optimistic_ —one of them has a nasty greatsword, and if they reach him he’s already fucking _dead_ , but—

Bren feels a sudden _pull_ and knows immediately something is about to go terribly wrong. The sensation is _strange_ , unlike anything he’s ever experienced before. He’s being pulled _back_ , as are the pebbles and twigs and dirt around him, and as he feels his feet momentarily lift as the pressure increases, he falls to the ground and grabs for an exposed root. This isn’t—he’s heard of _Reverse Gravity_ before, but _this—_

He _swears_ as the root rips out from under the ground. He digs his fingers into the dirt, clawing through and trying to find purchase in the loose soil. He can’t fucking _Counterspell_ if his hands aren’t free, and if he frees his hands, he’s fucking _hurtling_ towards them. He hears footfalls and turns as best he can, to see the one with the greatsword approaching. _Fuck._ Bren wants to _laugh._ _Shield_ also requires for his hands to be free.

The Kryn warrior swings for him, and Bren braces himself for the hit, but the translucent _Mage Armor_ manages to avert the momentum of their first attack. There are arcane sparks where the blade jabs along the protective barrier, and the soldier snarls at Bren’s bemused expression. He goes for his _back_ , and Bren fucking _laughs_ , as he lets go of the dirt and slams into the soldier, pushing them both back in the direction of the ruined safe house. This is fucking _ridiculous_. He’s going to _die_.

His manic smile slightly recedes, as he’s finally able to look at what’s been pulling him back. It’s—it’s fucking  _space_. He can see _stars_ , glittering in the darkness created around the cabin, as two mages glare at his tearing form. Bren raises his hand to _Counterspell_ , because of course he fucking does, and watches as the other two warriors rush for him with their battleaxes ready. One of the mages makes a motion with their hand, looking at him with utter _disgust_ , and the pattern of his Counterspell is broken, as it arcs towards that floating mass of emptiness and nebulae.

Bren feels the swing of a battleaxe against his shoulder, and he snarls. He’s already tried to react, and can now do nothing to deflect their weapons against his body as they butcher into him. One of the mages says something that sounds vaguely arcane, and Bren feels the direction of the pulsing pressure begin to redirect, and his knees fucking _break_ as he pelts to the ground. The other warrior he’s entangled with manages to use Bren to break his own fall, and then Bren feels that lovely greatsword _finally_ stab into his skin.

He loses track of what’s happening next. Bren is vaguely aware they’re carving into his stomach, and his legs, and his shoulders, and his _arms_ , which by themselves hurt and pulse more than _anything_ they can do to him. He digs his hands into the sloshing, disgusting dirt, and lets out a choked laugh. There’s a _hiss_ , and he _stiffens_ , lifting his head up weakly to see Frumpkin dematerialize as one of them kicks his lovely cat, and it’s all so incredibly _stupid_ , that this is what causes tears to well up in his eyes. _You’re supposed to tell Jester_ , he thinks, his body trembling. _Who’s going to tell Jester?_ He laughs again, and it’s this horrible, pathetic sound. He’s broken his promise. He’s broken his promise, and now he’s going to die, and he’s not even going to have his cat as he goes.

_Bren Aldric Ermendrud_. It’s that fucking _voice_ again. That deep, isolating, androgynous voice whose every word is charged with power. They sound vaguely annoyed, and—sad. They seem sad. _Tell her yourself._

He wants to wrinkle his nose, and demand to know _exactly_ what they want from him, as he’s being fucking stabbed to death, but then, he hears _screaming_. It’s horrifying, and loud, and all around him, and this _energy_ —he _knows_ this energy. It isn’t arcane. He’s felt it, in Jester’s lovely white marble temple, and in that _fucking_ shed, outside Alfield. This energy, this _magic_ —it’s _divine_ , and it’s _holy_ , and it’s _everywhere._ The screaming continues, until the voices die away, one by one. He hears, in stilted Common, one of the Xhorhassians snarl, “Who _are_ you?”, and then—a _thud_ , of the final body dropping to the floor.

_The coast, Ermendrud._ Their voice is slightly more gentle this time, and Bren finds their attempt at comfort even more chilling.

He lifts up his head, his neck twinging in pain as he does so, and he sees corpses fallen all around him. His arms shaking, he forces himself up and looks to where the expanding mass of dark energy was, but it’s no longer there. The mages have also dropped to the ground, and the warriors’ armor look  _singed_ , but it’s different than his. The putrid smell of burnt flesh doesn’t accompany this incineration, and he’s thankful for it.

There’s warmth on Bren’s face, and he looks up. The clouds have parted. The sun looks down at him, cold and glittering and remote, and he wants to curl into himself at the sight of it. “I was going to die,” he manages, and his voice is cracked and broken. “Of all the _people—_ ” He cuts himself off, killing the sound in his throat, because he’s grateful, of course he is, but he can’t help but think of another night, a long time ago, when two innocent people needed some fucking divine intervention. “If you heretic deities reserve only one or two people you can save every couple of years, I have some bad news for you.” He smiles bitterly. “You picked the fucking torturer.” He thinks of that woman, thirteen years ago, and he feels _sick_. “You picked wrong _twice_.”

The deity—that _being_ in the shed, the fucking _Archeart_ —doesn’t respond, and Bren pulls his knees close to his chest, wrapping his arms around them. Every part of him hurts, and he _knows_ he’s leaking red. The thought of making his way back to Bladegarden, for Brandt’s bright eyes to look at and catalog his various wounds for later gossip, horrifies him to his core. He’s shaking, and Frumpkin’s gone, and _Jester_ …. He hasn’t seen Jester in a _month_. They told him to go to the _coast_ …. Perhaps this is a favor, from the Traveler, but looking at the brutalized, twisted bodies around him—this feels new. He’s terrified because this feels _different._

This is entirely all too much, and Bren needs to _leave_. He needs to be out of the eye of this sun, and these trees, and these corpses, and he needs—he needs—he _knows_ what he needs, but he has to tell Master Ikithon. He needs to beg for a longer leash. He needs to be redeemed, so things can be back to the way they were, from before he disappointed his teacher and earned this punishment. He closes his eyes and allows the familiar arcane words to tear through his tongue, and casts _Teleport_.

 

Luckily fucking _Pohl_ isn’t at her desk. She’s somewhere else, in another room, but Bren hardly gives a fuck about this woman. He doesn’t want to deal with her insincere simpering and antagonism today. She’s not at her desk, and so she’s not doing her job right, and Bren walks right past her station, as quietly as he can manage, casting _Invisibility_ on himself as he does so.

He feels strange, like a ghost, walking down the stairs and across the great hall. He pauses by Master Ikithon’s portrait momentarily, and meets those dark, intelligent eyes, and remembers the mean, biting look of De’leth, as he grabbed onto Bren and dug his cold fingers into his chin. _He hoards you all. Like his nicest porcelain_. The thought makes Bren want to laugh. He wonders if this is what wealthy, powerful archmages do all day. Break their nicest porcelain. Humiliatingly, he feels tears start to well up in his eyes, and _god_ , does he hate this. He hates how off-kilter he is, and how he can’t stay still anymore, and how his own reflection makes wants him to scream, and how much he was _wrong,_ and how much Jester was _right._

_They’re going to kill you, and I want you to leave them._

He turns, not wanting to deal with that stinging, condemning remark, and begins to walk down a different hallway. He hasn’t gone here since he _graduated_ , but there is _something_ here, something pulling him in this direction, even as the familiar halls feel _wrong_ , even more so than they usually did. This is supposed to be his place, and these are supposed to be his people, and they _were going to leave him to die._ Jester was _right._ He exhales, his breath shaky, and finally stops, in front of Master Ikithon’s collection room. 

Bren considers the wooden door. He isn’t allowed here without permission, and every time he’s come down to this room, it was with Master Ikithon watching him like a hawk. It’s his prized room of heretical insignia. Bren was terribly bored by this place when he was younger, not caring much for the bureaucracy and the worship quite yet—Master Ikithon didn’t have enough time then to drill it into him. It was all about the fucking _magic_ , and this room felt uncomfortable, and _dead_ , then. Bren clenches and unclenches his jaw nervously, and pushes open the door.

There two main displays, each hosting dozens of symbols, but Bren remembers this place as well as he does anything else—which is to say, fucking _perfectly_. Looking at all these pendants makes him want to wince _—_ he murdered and tortured so many, and this _—_ it’s a _reminder_. It’s why he avoids this area. Bren averts his gaze, makes his way to the to the left, wondering why he’s even _here_ , in this manor that belongs to a man who seems content to let him die before giving him even a modicum of imagined freedom, but then, almost immediately, he finds what he doesn’t even completely realize he’s looking for _—_ and it’s _beautiful_.

The frame of the diamond on the back is made of ornate, shining silver, and the two opposite-facing crescent moons imposed on it are encrusted with beautiful, intricate red rubies. He doesn’t know what to make of it. It’s so _fake_ , and it’s so _real_. It’s _dishonest_ , in how it’s nothing like the scrawl on the side of the shed, making the heretics seem so much _stronger_ than they actually are. It makes it seem like there’s a _danger_. It makes it seem like they can fight _back_ , in any organized capacity. It was fifteen desperate people, thirteen years ago, with only one of them having any magic, and she used it to try to _heal_ Bren. He wonders how those heretics treat their nicest porcelain, and he smiles bitterly in spite of himself. This symbol is _—_ it’s _worthless_ , but he can feel a dignity in it, too. A wistfulness, and a longing _—_ and _ambition_. It’s familiar. It’s heart-wrenching. Bren reaches for it, but as he does so, he hears light footfalls, and his stomach _falls._

_Fuck_ , he thinks, fumbling for his gem-encrusted chalks. He has to _go_ , he has to _leave_ , before Master Ikithon can fulfill his promise of keeping Bren _close_ , but he doesn’t _—there’s nowhere—_

_The coast, Ermendrud._

“I _can’t_ ,” he hisses, even as he’s drawing messily on the furnished hardwood floor. He feels shame drip in every word he says. “She doesn’t _—_ I was _horrible_ , and I was _wrong_. She was _right_ , and I can’t _—_ ”

_She didn’t want to be._

“Fuck you,” he hisses, his hands trembling. The footfalls are getting louder, and Bren wonders if it’s the blood-soaked footprints or the _smell_ of the red that was his downfall.

_Do you want to be like this forever?_

His head is dizzy, and everything is spinning, and the circle is _ready_ , but he’s still hesitating, and it’s _killing_ him, this is all fucking _killing_ him, he’s not going to _survive this—_

_Answer me_.

He feels his weak will succumb to itself, and as he slams his fist to the ground, he feels the pattern of Master Ikithon’s _Counterspell_ try to break apart his temporary sigil, and Bren looks up, to his angry eyes, and gives him a soft shrug. “What _—_ ” Master Ikithon begins, his voice _thunderous_ , but Bren lifts up his own hand, and feels the flickering dark energy of his own _Counterspell_ tear apart Master Ikithon’s. He hears something like a mean little laugh in his head, thinks of Jester Lavorre, and how _right_ she was, and then _, Bren Aldric Ermendrud—_

Is _gone_.

**Author's Note:**

> Here's a link to the second arc of this series: [_Objectivist on Fire ___](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1487768) _ _.__


End file.
